Keeping the Faith

AS THE WHITE apple blossoms sway in the soft cool breeze, Champa points to a road down below, a sliver from her sitout. It takes nearly two hours to get there, and more to trek up back home. That’s the nearest road from her house in Liharik village of Nainital district in Uttarakhand.

“We have been hearing for a long time that the road will come,” she says laughing, her face glowing with a tinge of apples and peaches. Sitting outside her white painted stone house, on the edge of the forest at the back and with the hill sloping down in front—an idyllic setting to an outsider—she narrates her tale of woes with a smile. When the fruit season comes, she and her fam­ily will carry boxes of peaches, plums, pears, apples, and apricots on their heads or on mules to reach that road, their lifeline in Talla Ramgarh. When there is a health emergency, the patient has to be carried in a doli (palanquin) or on the shoulders of a youth to the road. Her two sons go to the village primary school which was built in 1990 when Ut­tarakhand was part of Uttar Pradesh, but the elder one, Kartik, will be in Class VI next year and will have to trek to Talla Ramgarh. Two taps have been installed in her house, under the Union govern­ment’s Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), but water is yet to flow out of them. On April 19, she will trek to the road to vote. It takes half-a-day to go and return, so she and her mother-in-law Radha, who is in her fifties, take turns so the house and the two dogs are not left unattended. Radha worries about the stability of her house every year when it rains heavily and is despondent, saying that nothing changes in Liharik.

Champa is reluctant to disclose her political pref­erences but betrays a soft corner for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Modiji achhe hain, par yeh adhe adhure kaam reh gayen hain. Ab Modiji har chote ghar mein thodi jakar dekh sakte hain (Modiji is good, though some measures have been left half-done. After all, Modiji cannot go to every small house and see).” Her sons have put up an image of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, along with other Hindu gods, inside a tree trunk outside their home.

As one treks farther from the road into the dense forest, mostly of oak trees, the sound of footsteps crushing dried leaves on the narrow pakhdandis (village pathways) breaking the silence, it keeps getting more picturesque. It’s partly cloudy, or else the snow-capped Himalayas would be partially visible. It’s a world cut off from the rest, and yet connected by 4G network and televi­sion. Every few miles, there is a house of brown stone and wood, at times locked, with orchards blooming with flowers—white, pink, lavender—left to fend for themselves in the wilderness. The locks on the doors, the grass seen growing wild through the windows and the dilapidated wood bear witness to the story of this Kumaoni village, tucked into the Himalayas. Once upon a time, the owners would have built the houses with their own hands, stone by stone, lining the walls with mud inside—the traditional architecture in the hills that keeps the homes warm in winter and cool in summer.

Champa’s nearest neighbour is at least a kilometre away, but nobody lives at the house. “There were around 55-60 families here, but now there are just around 20. The youngsters who left the village never returned,” says Dhan Singh, a 62-year-old farmer, who has stayed back. Born in Liharik, he says nothing has changed in the village, and the road, which has often been promised, is evading the village. He gets free rations, under the Modi government’s PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY), for which he has to go to Talla Ramgarh. Singh has not given up hope. “I have faith in Modi. After all, it’s been just 10 years. I am confident he will address our concerns about road and water.”

His father Bhim Singh, 86, had left Munsiyari in Pithoragarh district and landed in Liharik more than six decades ago to work as a farm labourer. He stayed back in the village. “Several old peo­ple have died. The youth have left,” he says sitting in his tiny mud-layered stone room, with a bed in one corner, a stove, a kettle, a table and a chair. When he suf­fered a fall about four years ago, he was taken in a palanquin to the road and from there was driven to Haldwani. He felt pain again about a year later and has had to make several trips to the hospital since, doctors saying the fall damaged his spine. Even from Talla Ramgarh it’s a two-hour drive to a full-fledged hospital in Haldwani in the plains. The lack of medical facilities has left hill people beleaguered even with road connectivity, as they have to travel to the plains for any medical emergency.

Singh says he will cast his vote as always. Those who have left are unlikely to return to vote. Voter turnout in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Uttarakhand was 61 per cent, nearly 10 per cent lower than in the neighbouring hill state of Himachal Pradesh. As many as 24 villages have become completely uninhabited in Uttarakhand in the last five years alone, taking the number of ghost villages in the state to 1,792, according to the Rural Develop­ment & Migration Prevention Commission report submitted a year ago. “There were 1,034 uninhabited villages in the state as per the 2011 Census. By 2018, 734 more villages were added to the list and 24 more by 2022. The number of villages devoid of human population now stands at 1,792,” SS Negi, vice chairman of the commission, had said while releasing the report.

Liharik is still not completely a ghost village. On its fertile land, the inhabitants grow some of the juiciest fruits and organic vegeta­bles. The air is purer. But lurking behind its breathtaking beauty is the fear of someone needing to rush to a hospital. Some villagers have given up on a road, yet several see Modi as their messiah.

“Our main problem is the road. Modi is trying to ensure development everywhere. I am confident that in the coming days his government will address our concern,” says Bhuwan Singh Danu, a farmer. As he speaks of the villagers’ problems in the absence of a road, his wife Maya gets hot cups of tea for everyone. Danu goes out and gets honey in a pot from one of the three beehives in his courtyard.

“This is the purest form of honey. It’s medicinal,” he says. He does not sell the honey. The family sells fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, aubergine, rajma (red kidney beans), and garlic which they take down to the road on mules, which costs them `200 per quintal. Danu is a beneficiary of the Centre’s PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, under which farmers get `2,000 thrice a year, but the family does not get free rations as their cards have been changed from An­tyodaya ration cards, meant for the poorest of the poor, to Above Poverty Line (APL) cards. Maya is upset about it, as are a few other villagers who have been shifted to APL but claim they are entitled to Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards that would make them eligible for free rations. They blame it on the village authorities.

Disagreeing with her husband’s political views, Maya says “government should change. If a dispensation is confident of win­ning each time, they will take power for granted.” But, finally, she says the family will discuss and vote for the same candidate. Her daughter Bhoomika, who is in Class 12, treks to Talla Ramgarh to get to her school. Maya says the children spend so much time commuting that they hardly have time to study. Bhoomika is determined to continue her studies and go to college next year. Maya’s mother Vimla Devi is disillusioned and is not sure if she will vote this time.

“If a road comes up here, resorts will spring up and land sharks will spoil the place, but without that there has been palayan (mi­gration) because life gets so difficult,” says Lalu, who lives in a nearby village connected by a road. It’s a Catch-22 according to him. Watching Liharik from across the hill, he has seen its people leave its fertile terraced orchards and move out over the years.

In Dhura, another neighbouring village, Lal Singh, a farmer, showers praise on Modi as he waters his fruit trees. On a plum tree, a beer bottle hangs tethered to a thin metal sheet, giving out a wind chime-like sound to scare away animals. He admits that nothing has changed in his village and laments price rise. “There is only BJP. Where is Congress? What is the point in voting for a Congress candidate when Modi is there at the Centre?”

But Sher Singh, a young farmer, disagrees. “Sab ko sirf chawal dikh raha hai. Tel aur subji mahengi ho gayi hai (Everyone is seeing only the free rice. Oil and vegetables have become more expensive.)”

Most people are unaware of who the candidates are in their Nainital- Udhamsingh Nagar constituency where the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Ajay Bhatt, a minister in the Union government, and Congress’ Prakash Joshi, a lesser known face, have filed their nominations. Once a Congress bastion, BJP has held the seat since 2014 when Bhagat Singh Koshyari defeated Congress’ KC Singh Baba, the maharaja of Kumaon, who had won the seat in 2009, defeating BJP’s Bachi Singh Rawat, and in 2004 when it was Nainital constituency. Bhatt won the Nainital-Udhamsingh Nagar seat in 2019, defeating Congress’ former chief minister and veteran lead­er Harish Rawat. This time, Rawat’s son Virendra Rawat is pitted against BJP’s former Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat in Haridwar, in the plains. “Ab candidate ko kaun dekh raha hai. Sab upar dekh rahe hain. Gareeb ko gehun aur chawal chahiye. Modi ne nas pakad li hai logon ki (Who is looking at candidates these days? Everyone is looking at the top. Modi has his hand on the pulse of the people),” says Jagdish Bisht of a nearby village.

BJP had won all five Lok Sabha seats in the bipolar contests in Uttara­khand in 2014 and 2019. It captured a vote share of 60 per cent in the last General Election, compared to 55.3 per cent in 2014. The party has also been winning the Almora-Pithoragarh reserved seat—a Congress stronghold earlier and the only other Lok Sabha constituency in the Ku­maon region—since 2014 when Modi came to power. BJP MP Ajay Tamta will again face Congress’ Pradeep Tamta, who held the seat in 2009. On the Garhwal side, besides Haridwar, in Tehri Garhwal BJP has again fielded Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah, a daugh­ter-in-law of the royal family who has held the seat since 2012. While Congress has fielded its two-time MLA from Mussoorie, Jot Singh Gunsola, a 26-year-old independent Bobby Panwar is also contesting from the seat on issues of unemployment and the Agniveer scheme. In Pauri Garhwal, Anil Baluni, the party’s na­tional spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP, will take on Congress’ Ganesh Godiyal, a five-time MLA from Thalisain and Srinagar Assembly seats. In 2019, BJP’s former Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat had defeated Congress candidate Manish Khanduri, an­other former BJP Chief Minister BC Khanduri’s son, in the seat. This time, Manish has returned to his father’s party. BJP also man­aged to break the trend of Congress and itself emerging victorious in alternate elections by winning a second consecutive term in the 2022 Assembly elections, although its tally came down from 57 to 47 in the 70-member legislature and its vote share slid by 2 per cent. With BJP setting a higher target of 370 seats in these Lok Sabha polls, it has to ensure that it retains its score in the Hindi belt where it peaked in 2019.

Modi, addressing a rally in Rudra­pur, in the Terai region of Kumaon, said the last 10 years of his govern­ment were just a “trailer” for the next term. He said that, with the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana, a rooftop solar free-electricity scheme offering 300 units of free power every month to one crore households, people will get 24-hour power, zero bills, and even an income from electricity.

Congress is targeting BJP on migra­tion, among other issues. In posts on X (formerly Twitter), Jairam Ramesh said, “Today, PM Modi is visiting the city of Rudrapur in Uttarakhand, a state that has been plagued by ram­pant unemployment, unprecedented out-migration, crumbling infrastruc­ture, and a deteriorating law and order situation in recent years.”

Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has said that his government was prioritising migration from mountainous areas and unemploy­ment, the two big challenges facing the state. Only four of the 13 districts in Uttarakhand are in the plains, yet the hill districts account for far fewer voters. Of the nearly 12 lakh polling stations the Election Commission is setting up across the country for over 96 crore regis­tered voters, 11,729 will be in Uttarakhand for its 83.21 lakh voters.

Modi, addressing a rally in Rudrapur in the terai region of Kumaon, said that with a rooftop solar free-electricity scheme offering 300 units of free power every month to one crore households, people will get 24-hour power and zero bills

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Citing data from the second interim report of the migration commission, Anoop Nautiyal, founder of Dehradun-based So­cial Development for Communities (SDC) Foundation, says it conveys a clear message that far more needs to be done to arrest the trend of increased migration in Uttarakhand. “While the sec­ond interim report does not cover the reasons for migration, the first interim report of April 2018 had informed us that 50.16 per cent, 15.21 per cent and 8.83 per cent people in Uttarakhand had migrated due to lack of adequate employment, education and healthcare facilities. It is reasonably safe to assume that these challenges not only continue to exist but have become far graver during the past four years,” he says.

Before the sun sets, one has to leave the forest. At the last stop to catch our breath before reaching a road—an ashram which was run by some Australians till four years ago—two mountain dogs named Simba and Shailu show the way out, waiting till we are out of sight. One wonders if the locals value the mesmerising beauty of their mountains, or if it all fades before their travails. It’s putting one foot in front of the other, living one day at a time. That’s life here; and maybe in several such hill villages.

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Amita Shah